Fragrances represent for most fashion houses a way to reach out to a wide number of consumers as, in most cases, they are (with some exceptions maybe...) the most affordable luxury products available on the market.
Yet, perfumes can also become the unlikely protagonists of news stories, as proved by the recently unveiled results of the investigations about the poisoning of Russian former double-agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, southern England, in March this year.
British detectives struggled to find the source of the Russian-made Novichok nerve agent used in the attempted murder of Skripal and his daughter.
Earlier on this week, though, two suspects were named, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, believed to be officers of the Russian military intelligence service (GRU) and charged with the use and possession of the nerve agent Novichok.
Investigators recently linked the poisoning of the Skripals to the June 30 poisoning of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, a couple living in Amesbury, near Salisbury. Sturgess actually died on July 8 as a result of her exposure to Novichok.
Rowley explained to the police that he found a box that he thought contained perfume in a charity bin where it had probably been left after it was used on the Skripals.
He put together the bottle and the applicator he found in the box once he arrived at his place, getting some of the contents on himself, while Sturgess applied the substance to her wrists and started feeling unwell.
Investigators found a pink box at Rowley's home labeled "Nina Ricci Premier Jour" with a bottle inside: tests undertaken at the Government's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory revealed that the bottle contained a significant amount of Novichok.
Enquiries at Nina Ricci uncovered that the bottle, box and nozzle were not genuine: the box was indeed a counterfeit and the bottle and nozzle had been especially adapted to ensure that the contents did not come into contact with the user when the liquid nerve agent was sprayed.
Perfume assumes therefore a central role in this tragic news story, calling to mind fiction and in particular the fragrance appearing in Luke Jennings' Codename Villanelle thriller novel, that was turned this year into TV series "Killing Eve" for BBC America.
Villanelle, AKA killer Oxana Vorontsova (in the novel) and Oksana Astankova (in the TV series; portrayed by British actor Jodie Comer) is a fictional assassin with a penchant for fashionable clothes and luxury products, that she uses as prizes to reward herself after her killings (in the TV series she wears for example a frothy pink Molly Goddard number, a Dries Van Noten suit, a Burberry dress, a J.W. Anderson jacket and Balenciaga boots).
Perfume has a key role in the story: in the novel, psychopath assassin Oxana choses her cover name after her favorite fragrance.
"It's called Villanelle," a shop assistant explains her in the novel, "It was the favourite scent of the Comtesse du Barry. The perfume house added the red ribbon after she was guillotined in 1793." Oxana sarcastically replies: "I shall have to be careful, then".
Doubling up as a waitress and aspiring perfumer Villanelle uses an invisible liquid in a perfume bottle to poison one of her victims (the same liquid in the same perfume bottle then accidentally kills her neighbour and temporary boyfriend...).
Oxana also sends to Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh), a British intelligence agent who becomes obsessed with this heartless assassin, her lack of remorse and her modus operandi, a bottle of "La Villanelle" (it is worth adding that a perfume named Villanelle was produced this year in Belgium before "Killing Eve" was broadcast; its makers highlighted the name was inspired by Keith Douglas' 1940 poem "Villanelle of Spring Bells").
Villanelle is certainly not the first and will not be the last to use a fragrance as inspiration and poison, but in these two cases there seems to be an intriguing parallelism between reality and fiction.
Scared of perfumes now? Well, in connection with the Novichok case the police reassured consumers that anyone who has boughta Nina Ricci perfume from a legitimate source should obviously not be concerned. But, from now on, never spray on yourself any substance you may find by pure chance, even when it comes in what looks like a designer bottle.
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